More Encouraging News

It was an incredible experience to participate in a historic occurrence in the State House of Representatives last Wednesday.

In the past, one of the foremost abuses of legislative power would often occur at the end of each legislative session. During this time, legislators would insert amendments into bills through what is known as a conference committee amendment.

The amendments could completely change the bills and include any number of items favoring special interests. The reason this was so dangerous is because amendments were not approved by a committee which met in the purview of the public, but were instead approved by legislators who simply signed their names to the amendments. These new bills would then be posted for consideration by the House and Senate where in some cases they could be considered minutes after posting.

You may recall how I have described in the past how challenging it has been to try to read these bills as they were posted to the calender, knowing that minutes later the bill could be brought up for a vote. If it was this hard for a legislator to keep up with what was being proposed, you can only imagine how impossible it was for a citizen to ever know what laws were being proposed.

By the time the public found out about these laws, it was too late and the changes were already on the way to the Governor. Imagine how it would feel if you were in an industry which experienced a huge fee increase from the government without ever having the opportunity to call your legislator and tell them how you felt.

This year, all of that seems to have changed.

During the last legislative interim, incoming House Speaker Kris Steel formed a committee to recommend changes to the rules of the House. The committee recommended requiring the creation of standing conference committees to vote on bills in public and recommended that all bills be on the House agenda for a set amount of time before becoming eligible for consideration.

These recommendations were accepted by the House, and the conference committees have been formed. Between now and the end of session these committees will meet and it is my hope that not a single house bill will be exempted from a public hearing prior to being considered by the House.

I will serve as the Vice-Chair for the conference committee on Government Modernization and Rules. The committee will consider bills which originated from the House Administrative Rules, Rules and Government Modernization Committees. On Wednesday, our conference committee was the first to meet under the new rules.

This reform will be far reaching and I believe it will have a chilling effect on the ability of special interests to move their legislation during the last days of session.

This legislative reform continues a progression of significant reforms which have continually opened up the legislative process over the past few years. The pace of reform has not been to my personal satisfaction, but there is no arguing that changes have taken place in a responsible and process-changing manner.